


Gentleness in Unexpected Places

by BardicRaven



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Strangers to Friends, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Teasing, arts v sports, consenting possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: Saraie may not have understood what she was signing up for when she agreed to be a host student forthe term, but she soon finds out and receives a sweet story of another pair of lovers along the way.





	Gentleness in Unexpected Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Icie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icie/gifts).



Saraie came to the Host Student Exchange location a few minutes early. She looked around, surprised that nobody else was around.

 “Name, please?” She startled, quite sure that nobody had been there a moment before.

 “Saraie,” she replied. “Saraie Nightsdaughter.” A clipboard checked, a ticcy mark placed by presumably her name and a ‘This way, please.” left her moving, confused, to a room with a comfortable couch.

 “What’s this?” Saraie asked. “I thought I was here to meet my exchange student? I’m a host for this term.”

 “Well, yes, of course you are. That’s why you’re… oh!” The sound resolved into a troubled feminine voice, and Saraie looked up to see a middle-aged woman looking very upset as she looked at her clipboard, the walls, anywhere but at her.

 “What’s wrong?” The woman’s distress only added to her own.

 Finally, the woman’s eyes met hers. “I’m sorry. I thought you would have been informed.”

 “Of what?” Saraie asked sharply, her fear growing.

 “That… that when we asked for hosts for this program, we’re asking for _hosts_. The students who participate in this program are energy-beings, looking to experience a physical body for a term. You should have been told….”

 “Oh,” Saraie said softly. “Oh.”

 “Yes, oh.” The woman shook herself. “Well, there’s no help for it. I’ll simply inform your exchange student that they’ll have to wait for another host.” She turned to go.

“Wait!” Saraie said. When the woman paused, she continued before she could think too much about it and lose her nerve. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t?” The woman caught herself, clearly trying to avoid talking Saraie out of whatever plan she had.

“You don’t,” Saraie replied more firmly. “I’ll do it. It’s my fault if I didn’t understand, I could have asked, found out more. I’m not going to make them wait just because I was stupid.”

“You don’t have to...”

Saraie held up a hand. “No, I want to do it.”

 The woman’s face cleared. “All right, then. I’ll let your partner know you’re here.”

 It was only a matter of a few moments, not really enough time to let Saraie’s nerves get the better of her, when a voice appeared inside her mind.

{Thank you for agreeing to be my host. My name is Samuela.}

 “Uh, hi, Samuela.” Saraie fidgeted a moment, then asked, “So, uhm, how does this go? Since apparently I missed a few things about this program.”

 {You relax, open yourself to me and I enter. Then, we are partners for the semester.} The matter-of-fact tone of Samuela’s voice steadied her, for all she didn’t hear it with her actual ears. Somehow, that made it better than if she had. An invisible voice to go with an invisible body. Fitting, somehow.

 “All right. How do I do that?”

 {Just breathe. Let go. I’ll let you know when you are ready, then you tell me when.}

 Saraie began to breathe slowly, in and out. After a few moments, Samuela’s mindvoice came to her again, {You are prepared. Are you ready for me to enter you?}

 Saraje thought a moment. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

 And like that, it was done. Suddenly, there was another person looking out of her eyes in addition to her, and it was more than a bit dizzying.

{Close your eyes for a little bit. I hear it helps.}

 Gratefully, Saraie did as she was advised and the dizzyness stopped.

A silence, then {Would you like me to tell you a story, to pass the time while your body and mind adjust to my presence?}

“Sure.”

 {It is a story about something that happened at the last school I exchanged at. A sweet thing I saw and remembered.}

 {It goes like this... }

* * *

 They were known as Brushes and Sport, respectively, an art student and a sports scholarship girl, both of whom were devoted to their chosen activity to the exclusion of much else. Enough so that they got their nicknames within a few weeks of coming to the school.

 They were notorious for the makeup they wore – not the traditional sort, put on with sponges from pots – but paint, real paint for Brushes and dirt smudges for Sport. It got to be so that their friends would make sure to have extra handkerchiefs and things with them at all times to hand them to clean their faces with.

 They didn’t have much use for each other, Brushes and Sport, but they didn’t hate each other either. Their spheres were simply different, and that’s all there was to it. They teased each other on a regular basis, but there was no heat to it. Just an awareness of difference, difference that must be remarked upon in some way.

 Until one day, when Brushes happened to be walking by the softball field where Sport was pitching practice balls. She threw and as she did so, she saw, really saw, the young woman she been teasing all semester long. A familiar unfamiliar feeling began to spread up her body as she looked, and liked what she saw.

 But what to do about it? That was the question. Sport looked and a thought came to her. “Hey, Brushes!” she called out from the mound. The young woman stopped, looked over at her questioningly.

“You...” she gestured to her cheek.

 “Oh!” Brushes reached up, saw the crimson paint on her fingertips, and reached for one of the cloths she carried, carefully wiping her face, then looking back at Sport, who gave her a thumbs up.

 “You got it!”

 “Thanks!” Brushes said and then went on her way.

Such a simple thing, and yet, the beginning of so much more.

* * *

 It started slow and grew steadily over the rest of the school year. After that first time, Brushes found herself at the softball field more often than not – when there was a game, where there was a practice. And while it took her a while to be willing to admit it, eventually, she had to admit, if only to herself, that her day wasn’t really complete without a glimpse of Sport.

  ~~F~~ or her part, Sport found herself in the unfamiliar territory of an art gallery a few days after that first exchange. She heard that Brushes had some of her work displayed in a gallery in town, and made it a point to go see it. When she was done, while she couldn’t say that she understood art hugely more than she did before, but she did understand a bit more about Brushes and why she did what she did.

 And why she was often to be found with as much paint on her as on her canvases.

 It only made her the more attractive. in Sports' opinion.

And so it went until the end of the school year drew near. Brushes had won space in a prestigious show and exhibited to much acclaim. And the softball team made it to the league finals, also to much aclaim, if to a largely different audience.

Brushes made a point of going to the final game. In the applause after the win, she went down to the field and found Sport in the middle of the crows/crowd, receiving praise for a job well-done. Brushes waited, until finally the crowd had left, and it was just the two of them, alone at last.

 “Hey, Sport!” Brushes called as the young woman prepared to go back to the locker room with the rest of her team.

 Sport looked up and her face brightened on seeing who it was.

 “Hey, Brushes!”

 “You know you have dirt on your face,” Brushes said as she walked over and gave her friend a hug.

“Yeah,” Sport retorted. “and you still have paint on yours.”

 “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” Brushes said. Then, a choice and a daring,  “What do you say to us going somewhere private after you get done here, and cleaning each other up?”

 Sport paused, taken aback for a moment, then said with a wicked grin on her face, “Only if it means we get to get really dirty first.”

 “But of course.”

“It’s a date.”

* * *

Saraie came back to herself to find that the odd feelings had gone, replaced by a sense of life and wholeness that she couldn’t recall ever feeling before. And while she was glad for Samuela’s story, she was also curious.

 “How do you know so much about what happened?”

 {I was with Sport that term. I shared her longing and her love.} There was a tenderness there that filled an empty space inside Saraie that she didn’t know she’d had until now.

 “What about me? If I fall in love, will you share that too?”

 {Yes.}

 A pause, then, “I think I’d like that.”

 {I’m glad.} A pause then, {Shall we go? It would be good to get settled in before classes start.}

 “Yes, let’s. I’m ready now.”

 {Good. Then let’s go.}

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you don't mind that I made the host student relationshipa good and gentle one - to do otherwise would have been to squick ME, so I hope the compromise works for you.
> 
> My experience with channelling has been that in its own way, it can be even more intimate than having a lover, but just in case, I added the story of Brushes and Sport. 
> 
> Enjoy!  
> FSEA


End file.
